git-svn(1) Manual Page

NAME

git-svn - Bidirectional operation between a Subversion repository and git

SYNOPSIS

git svn <command> [options] [arguments]

DESCRIPTION

git svn is a simple conduit for changesets between Subversion and git.
It provides a bidirectional flow of changes between a Subversion and a git
repository.

git svn can track a standard Subversion repository,
following the common "trunk/branches/tags" layout, with the --stdlayout option.
It can also follow branches and tags in any layout with the -T/-t/-b options
(see options to init below, and also the clone command).

Once tracking a Subversion repository (with any of the above methods), the git
repository can be updated from Subversion by the fetch command and
Subversion updated from git by the dcommit command.

COMMANDS

init

Initializes an empty git repository with additional
metadata directories for git svn. The Subversion URL
may be specified as a command-line argument, or as full
URL arguments to -T/-t/-b. Optionally, the target
directory to operate on can be specified as a second
argument. Normally this command initializes the current
directory.

-T<trunk_subdir>

--trunk=<trunk_subdir>

-t<tags_subdir>

--tags=<tags_subdir>

-b<branches_subdir>

--branches=<branches_subdir>

-s

--stdlayout

These are optional command-line options for init. Each of
these flags can point to a relative repository path
(--tags=project/tags) or a full url
(--tags=https://foo.org/project/tags).
You can specify more than one --tags and/or --branches options, in case
your Subversion repository places tags or branches under multiple paths.
The option --stdlayout is
a shorthand way of setting trunk,tags,branches as the relative paths,
which is the Subversion default. If any of the other options are given
as well, they take precedence.

--no-metadata

Set the noMetadata option in the [svn-remote] config.
This option is not recommended, please read the svn.noMetadata
section of this manpage before using this option.

--use-svm-props

Set the useSvmProps option in the [svn-remote] config.

--use-svnsync-props

Set the useSvnsyncProps option in the [svn-remote] config.

--rewrite-root=<URL>

Set the rewriteRoot option in the [svn-remote] config.

--rewrite-uuid=<UUID>

Set the rewriteUUID option in the [svn-remote] config.

--username=<user>

For transports that SVN handles authentication for (http,
https, and plain svn), specify the username. For other
transports (eg svn+ssh://), you must include the username in
the URL, eg svn+ssh://foo@svn.bar.com/project

--prefix=<prefix>

This allows one to specify a prefix which is prepended
to the names of remotes if trunk/branches/tags are
specified. The prefix does not automatically include a
trailing slash, so be sure you include one in the
argument if that is what you want. If --branches/-b is
specified, the prefix must include a trailing slash.
Setting a prefix is useful if you wish to track multiple
projects that share a common repository.

--ignore-paths=<regex>

When passed to init or clone this regular expression will
be preserved as a config key. See fetch for a description
of --ignore-paths.

--no-minimize-url

When tracking multiple directories (using --stdlayout,
--branches, or --tags options), git svn will attempt to connect
to the root (or highest allowed level) of the Subversion
repository. This default allows better tracking of history if
entire projects are moved within a repository, but may cause
issues on repositories where read access restrictions are in
place. Passing --no-minimize-url will allow git svn to
accept URLs as-is without attempting to connect to a higher
level directory. This option is off by default when only
one URL/branch is tracked (it would do little good).

fetch

Fetch unfetched revisions from the Subversion remote we are
tracking. The name of the [svn-remote "..."] section in the
.git/config file may be specified as an optional command-line
argument.

--localtime

Store Git commit times in the local timezone instead of UTC. This
makes git log (even without --date=local) show the same times
that svn log would in the local timezone.

This doesn't interfere with interoperating with the Subversion
repository you cloned from, but if you wish for your local Git
repository to be able to interoperate with someone else's local Git
repository, either don't use this option or you should both use it in
the same local timezone.

--parent

Fetch only from the SVN parent of the current HEAD.

--ignore-paths=<regex>

This allows one to specify a Perl regular expression that will
cause skipping of all matching paths from checkout from SVN.
The --ignore-paths option should match for every fetch
(including automatic fetches due to clone, dcommit,
rebase, etc) on a given repository.

config key: svn-remote.<name>.ignore-paths
+
If the ignore-paths config key is set and the command line option is
also given, both regular expressions will be used.
+
Examples:
+
--
Skip "doc*" directory for every fetch;;
+
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--ignore-paths="^doc"
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skip "branches" and "tags" of first level directories

--ignore-paths="^[^/]+/(?:branches|tags)"

clone

Runs init and fetch. It will automatically create a
directory based on the basename of the URL passed to it;
or if a second argument is passed; it will create a directory
and work within that. It accepts all arguments that the
init and fetch commands accept; with the exception of
--fetch-all and --parent. After a repository is cloned,
the fetch command will be able to update revisions without
affecting the working tree; and the rebase command will be
able to update the working tree with the latest changes.

rebase

This fetches revisions from the SVN parent of the current HEAD
and rebases the current (uncommitted to SVN) work against it.

This works similarly to svn update or git pull except that
it preserves linear history with git rebase instead of
git merge for ease of dcommitting with git svn.

This accepts all options that git svn fetch and git rebase
accept. However, --fetch-all only fetches from the current
[svn-remote], and not all [svn-remote] definitions.

Like git rebase; this requires that the working tree be clean
and have no uncommitted changes.

-l

--local

Do not fetch remotely; only run git rebase against the
last fetched commit from the upstream SVN.

dcommit

Commit each diff from a specified head directly to the SVN
repository, and then rebase or reset (depending on whether or
not there is a diff between SVN and head). This will create
a revision in SVN for each commit in git.
It is recommended that you run git svn fetch and rebase (not
pull or merge) your commits against the latest changes in the
SVN repository.
An optional revision or branch argument may be specified, and
causes git svn to do all work on that revision/branch
instead of HEAD.
This is advantageous over set-tree (below) because it produces
cleaner, more linear history.

--no-rebase

After committing, do not rebase or reset.

--commit-url <URL>

Commit to this SVN URL (the full path). This is intended to
allow existing git svn repositories created with one transport
method (e.g. svn:// or http:// for anonymous read) to be
reused if a user is later given access to an alternate transport
method (e.g. svn+ssh:// or https://) for commit.

config key: svn-remote.<name>.commiturl
config key: svn.commiturl (overwrites all svn-remote.<name>.commiturl options)
+
Using this option for any other purpose (don't ask) is very strongly
discouraged.

--mergeinfo=<mergeinfo>

Add the given merge information during the dcommit
(e.g. --mergeinfo="/branches/foo:1-10"). All svn server versions can
store this information (as a property), and svn clients starting from
version 1.5 can make use of it. git svn currently does not use it
and does not set it automatically.

branch

Create a branch in the SVN repository.

-m

--message

Allows to specify the commit message.

-t

--tag

Create a tag by using the tags_subdir instead of the branches_subdir
specified during git svn init.

-d

--destination

If more than one --branches (or --tags) option was given to the init
or clone command, you must provide the location of the branch (or
tag) you wish to create in the SVN repository. The value of this
option must match one of the paths specified by a --branches (or
--tags) option. You can see these paths with the commands

it's not completely compatible with the --verbose
output in svn log, but reasonably close.

--limit=<n>

is NOT the same as --max-count, doesn't count
merged/excluded commits

--incremental

supported

New features:

--show-commit

shows the git commit sha1, as well

--oneline

our version of --pretty=oneline

Note

SVN itself only stores times in UTC and nothing else. The regular svn
client converts the UTC time to the local time (or based on the TZ=
environment). This command has the same behaviour.

Any other arguments are passed directly to git log

blame

Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file. The
output of this mode is format-compatible with the output of
`svn blame' by default. Like the SVN blame command,
local uncommitted changes in the working copy are ignored;
the version of the file in the HEAD revision is annotated. Unknown
arguments are passed directly to git blame.

--git-format

Produce output in the same format as git blame, but with
SVN revision numbers instead of git commit hashes. In this mode,
changes that haven't been committed to SVN (including local
working-copy edits) are shown as revision 0.

find-rev

When given an SVN revision number of the form rN, returns the
corresponding git commit hash (this can optionally be followed by a
tree-ish to specify which branch should be searched). When given a
tree-ish, returns the corresponding SVN revision number.

set-tree

You should consider using dcommit instead of this command.
Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN. This relies on
your imported fetch data being up-to-date. This makes
absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it
simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or
commit. All merging is assumed to have taken place
independently of git svn functions.

create-ignore

Recursively finds the svn:ignore property on directories and
creates matching .gitignore files. The resulting files are staged to
be committed, but are not committed. Use -r/--revision to refer to a
specific revision.

show-ignore

Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on
directories. The output is suitable for appending to
the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.

mkdirs

Attempts to recreate empty directories that core git cannot track
based on information in $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log files.
Empty directories are automatically recreated when using
"git svn clone" and "git svn rebase", so "mkdirs" is intended
for use after commands like "git checkout" or "git reset".

commit-diff

Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
command-line. This command does not rely on being inside an git svn
init-ed repository. This command takes three arguments, (a) the
original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree result, (c) the
URL of the target Subversion repository. The final argument
(URL) may be omitted if you are working from a git svn-aware
repository (that has been init-ed with git svn).
The -r<revision> option is required for this.

info

Shows information about a file or directory similar to what
`svn info' provides. Does not currently support a -r/--revision
argument. Use the --url option to output only the value of the
URL: field.

proplist

Lists the properties stored in the Subversion repository about a
given file or directory. Use -r/--revision to refer to a specific
Subversion revision.

propget

Gets the Subversion property given as the first argument, for a
file. A specific revision can be specified with -r/--revision.

show-externals

Shows the Subversion externals. Use -r/--revision to specify a
specific revision.

Undoes the effects of fetch back to the specified revision.
This allows you to re-fetch an SVN revision. Normally the
contents of an SVN revision should never change and reset
should not be necessary. However, if SVN permissions change,
or if you alter your --ignore-paths option, a fetch may fail
with "not found in commit" (file not previously visible) or
"checksum mismatch" (missed a modification). If the problem
file cannot be ignored forever (with --ignore-paths) the only
way to repair the repo is to use reset.

Only the rev_map and refs/remotes/git-svn are changed. Follow reset
with a fetch and then git reset or git rebase to move local
branches onto the new tree.

-r <n>

--revision=<n>

Specify the most recent revision to keep. All later revisions
are discarded.

OPTIONS

Only used with the init command.
These are passed directly to git init.

-r <arg>

--revision <arg>

Used with the fetch command.

This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history
to be supported. $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
$NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.

This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
but is generally not recommended because history will be skipped
and lost.

-

--stdin

Only used with the set-tree command.

Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
order. Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
git rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used.

--rmdir

Only used with the dcommit, set-tree and commit-diff commands.

Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
behind. SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
removed by default if there are no files left in them. git
cannot version empty directories. Enabling this flag will make
the commit to SVN act like git.

config key: svn.rmdir

-e

--edit

Only used with the dcommit, set-tree and commit-diff commands.

Edit the commit message before committing to SVN. This is off by
default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
tree objects.

config key: svn.edit

-l<num>

--find-copies-harder

Only used with the dcommit, set-tree and commit-diff commands.

They are both passed directly to git diff-tree; see
git-diff-tree(1) for more information.

config key: svn.l
config key: svn.findcopiesharder

-A<filename>

--authors-file=<filename>

Syntax is compatible with the file used by git cvsimport:

loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>

If this option is specified and git svn encounters an SVN
committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, git svn
will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
appropriate entry. Re-running the previous git svn command
after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.

config key: svn.authorsfile

--authors-prog=<filename>

If this option is specified, for each SVN committer name that
does not exist in the authors file, the given file is executed
with the committer name as the first argument. The program is
expected to return a single line of the form "Name <email>",
which will be treated as if included in the authors file.

-q

--quiet

Make git svn less verbose. Specify a second time to make it
even less verbose.

--repack[=<n>]

--repack-flags=<flags>

These should help keep disk usage sane for large fetches with
many revisions.

--repack takes an optional argument for the number of revisions
to fetch before repacking. This defaults to repacking every
1000 commits fetched if no argument is specified.

--repack-flags are passed directly to git repack.

config key: svn.repack
config key: svn.repackflags

-m

--merge

-s<strategy>

--strategy=<strategy>

These are only used with the dcommit and rebase commands.

Passed directly to git rebase when using dcommit if a
git reset cannot be used (see dcommit).

-n

--dry-run

This can be used with the dcommit, rebase, branch and
tag commands.

For dcommit, print out the series of git arguments that would show
which diffs would be committed to SVN.

For rebase, display the local branch associated with the upstream svn
repository associated with the current branch and the URL of svn
repository that will be fetched from.

For branch and tag, display the urls that will be used for copying when
creating the branch or tag.

--use-log-author

When retrieving svn commits into git (as part of fetch, rebase, or
dcommit operations), look for the first From: or Signed-off-by: line
in the log message and use that as the author string.

--add-author-from

When committing to svn from git (as part of commit-diff, set-tree or dcommit
operations), if the existing log message doesn't already have a
From: or Signed-off-by: line, append a From: line based on the
git commit's author string. If you use this, then --use-log-author
will retrieve a valid author string for all commits.

ADVANCED OPTIONS

-i<GIT_SVN_ID>

--id <GIT_SVN_ID>

This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment). This
allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
when tracking a single URL. The log and dcommit commands
no longer require this switch as an argument.

This is especially helpful when we're tracking a directory
that has been moved around within the repository, or if we
started tracking a branch and never tracked the trunk it was
descended from. This feature is enabled by default, use
--no-follow-parent to disable it.

config key: svn.followparent

CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS

svn.noMetadata

svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata

This gets rid of the git-svn-id: lines at the end of every commit.

This option can only be used for one-shot imports as git svn
will not be able to fetch again without metadata. Additionally,
if you lose your .git/svn/*/.rev_map. files, git svn will not
be able to rebuild them.

The git svn log command will not work on repositories using
this, either. Using this conflicts with the useSvmProps
option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.

This option is NOT recommended as it makes it difficult to track down
old references to SVN revision numbers in existing documentation, bug
reports and archives. If you plan to eventually migrate from SVN to git
and are certain about dropping SVN history, consider
git-filter-branch(1) instead. filter-branch also allows
reformatting of metadata for ease-of-reading and rewriting authorship
info for non-"svn.authorsFile" users.

svn.useSvmProps

svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps

This allows git svn to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.

If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by SVK).
The property contains a repository UUID and a revision. We want
to make it look like we are mirroring the original URL, so
introduce a helper function that returns the original identity
URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in commit
messages.

svn.useSvnsyncProps

svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops

Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users
of the svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and
later.

svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot

This allows users to create repositories from alternate
URLs. For example, an administrator could run git svn on the
server locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute
the repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the
metadata so users of it will see the public URL.

svn-remote.<name>.rewriteUUID

Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users who need
to remap the UUID manually. This may be useful in situations
where the original UUID is not available via either useSvmProps
or useSvnsyncProps.

svn-remote.<name>.pushurl

Similar to git's remote.<name>.pushurl, this key is designed
to be used in cases where url points to an SVN repository
via a read-only transport, to provide an alternate read/write
transport. It is assumed that both keys point to the same
repository. Unlike commiturl, pushurl is a base path. If
either commiturl or pushurl could be used, commiturl
takes precedence.

svn.brokenSymlinkWorkaround

This disables potentially expensive checks to workaround
broken symlinks checked into SVN by broken clients. Set this
option to "false" if you track a SVN repository with many
empty blobs that are not symlinks. This option may be changed
while git svn is running and take effect on the next
revision fetched. If unset, git svn assumes this option to
be "true".

svn.pathnameencoding

This instructs git svn to recode pathnames to a given encoding.
It can be used by windows users and by those who work in non-utf8
locales to avoid corrupted file names with non-ASCII characters.
Valid encodings are the ones supported by Perl's Encode module.

Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, rewriteUUID, useSvnsyncProps and useSvmProps
options all affect the metadata generated and used by git svn; they
must be set in the configuration file before any history is imported
and these settings should never be changed once they are set.

Additionally, only one of these options can be used per svn-remote
section because they affect the git-svn-id: metadata line, except
for rewriteRoot and rewriteUUID which can be used together.

BASIC EXAMPLES

Tracking and contributing to the trunk of a Subversion-managed project:

Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
(complete with a trunk, tags and branches):

# Clone a repo (like git clone):
git svn clone http://svn.example.com/project -T trunk -b branches -t tags
# View all branches and tags you have cloned:
git branch -r
# Create a new branch in SVN
git svn branch waldo
# Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
# with the appropriate name):
git reset --hard remotes/trunk
# You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time. The usage
# of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.

The initial git svn clone can be quite time-consuming
(especially for large Subversion repositories). If multiple
people (or one person with multiple machines) want to use
git svn to interact with the same Subversion repository, you can
do the initial git svn clone to a repository on a server and
have each person clone that repository with git clone:

REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE

Originally, git svn recommended that the remotes/git-svn branch be
pulled or merged from. This is because the author favored
git svn set-tree B to commit a single head rather than the
git svn set-tree A..B notation to commit multiple commits.

If you use git svn set-tree A..B to commit several diffs and you do
not have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should
use git svn rebase to update your work branch instead of git pull or
git merge. pull/merge can cause non-linear history to be flattened
when committing into SVN, which can lead to merge commits reversing
previous commits in SVN.

MERGE TRACKING

While git svn can track
copy history (including branches and tags) for repositories adopting a
standard layout, it cannot yet represent merge history that happened
inside git back upstream to SVN users. Therefore it is advised that
users keep history as linear as possible inside git to ease
compatibility with SVN (see the CAVEATS section below).

CAVEATS

For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with Subversion,
it is recommended that all git svn users clone, fetch and dcommit
directly from the SVN server, and avoid all git clone/pull/merge/push
operations between git repositories and branches. The recommended
method of exchanging code between git branches and users is
git format-patch and git am, or just dcommiting to the SVN repository.

Running git merge or git pull is NOT recommended on a branch you
plan to dcommit from because Subversion users cannot see any
merges you've made. Furthermore, if you merge or pull from a git branch
that is a mirror of an SVN branch, dcommit may commit to the wrong
branch.

If you do merge, note the following rule: git svn dcommit will

attempt to commit on top of the SVN commit named in

git log --grep=^git-svn-id: --first-parent -1

You must therefore ensure that the most recent commit of the branch
you want to dcommit to is the first parent of the merge. Chaos will
ensue otherwise, especially if the first parent is an older commit on
the same SVN branch.

git clone does not clone branches under the refs/remotes/ hierarchy or
any git svn metadata, or config. So repositories created and managed with
using git svn should use rsync for cloning, if cloning is to be done
at all.

Since dcommit uses rebase internally, any git branches you git push to
before dcommit on will require forcing an overwrite of the existing ref
on the remote repository. This is generally considered bad practice,
see the git-push(1) documentation for details.

Do not use the --amend option of git-commit(1) on a change you've
already dcommitted. It is considered bad practice to --amend commits
you've already pushed to a remote repository for other users, and
dcommit with SVN is analogous to that.

When using multiple --branches or --tags, git svn does not automatically
handle name collisions (for example, if two branches from different paths have
the same name, or if a branch and a tag have the same name). In these cases,
use init to set up your git repository then, before your first fetch, edit
the .git/config file so that the branches and tags are associated with
different name spaces. For example:

BUGS

We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable. Any unhandled
properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log

Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not
tracked when committing to SVN. I do not plan on adding support for
this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all
the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either). Committing
renamed and copied files is fully supported if they're similar enough
for git to detect them.

CONFIGURATION

git svn stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
repository .git/config file. It is similar the core git
[remote] sections except fetch keys do not accept glob
arguments; but they are instead handled by the branches
and tags keys. Since some SVN repositories are oddly
configured with multiple projects glob expansions such those
listed below are allowed:

Keep in mind that the \ (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
(right of the :) must* be the farthest right path component;
however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it's an
independent path component (surrounded by / or EOL). This
type of configuration is not automatically created by init and
should be manually entered with a text-editor or using git config.

It is also possible to fetch a subset of branches or tags by using a
comma-separated list of names within braces. For example:

Note that git-svn keeps track of the highest revision in which a branch
or tag has appeared. If the subset of branches or tags is changed after
fetching, then .git/svn/.metadata must be manually edited to remove (or
reset) branches-maxRev and/or tags-maxRev as appropriate.